ARM, TSMC refresh partnership, aim at 20-nm

LONDON — Foundry chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. and ARM Holdings plc have signed an agreement that provides TSMC with access to ARM processors and enables the development of ARM physical IP across TSMC technology nodes down to 20-nm.

The two companies are already very close, although ARM (Cambridge, England) has also been courting GlobalFoundries Inc. (Sunnyvale, Calif.) in the last couple of years. The latest agreement provides access to physical and processor IP over a range of process nodes extending down to 20-nm, ARM said.

The agreement provides TSMC (Hsinchu, Taiwan) with a license to optimize the implementation of ARM processors on TSMC process technologies, including ARM Cortex processor family and the CoreLink interconnect fabric for AMBA. It also establishes a long-term relationship with ARM for the development of physical IP, including memory products and standard cell libraries targeting 28-nm and 20-nm processes.

Processor implementations prepared by ARM and TSMC working together will target consumer-centric market segments including wireless, portable computing, tablet PCs and high performance computing, said ARM. "We believe this effort will enhance the value of our Open Innovation Platform that efficiently empowers innovation throughout the supply chain, said Fu-Chieh Hsu, vice president of design and technology platform at TSMC, in a statement issued by ARM.

"This new agreement assures the industry that ARM and TSMC will collectively provide IP development leadership for advanced process technologies well into the future," said Simon Segars, general manager of ARM's Physical IP division, in the same statement.

The agreement makes a lot of sense for TSMC & ARM.The availability of an optimized version ARM CPU with TSMC, helps them keep their fab utilization high by targeting one of the fastest growing market , ie. smart phones and MIDs.
For ARM, they get improved performance for their CPUs on a widely used foundry process, and can keep their customers happy.
Overall a Win-Win.

TSMC is now a behemoth and any relationship with it is just right. I think it is a good one except that it is still consolidating power to the Asia power when many are expecting some foundry business in the western part of the world.

ARM is going out with TWO girls; TSMC and GlobalFoundries. ARM was cuddling TSMC back in 2005, 2006 and 2007. And it was seen kissing GlobalFoundries in 2008 and 2009.
With the latest announcement ARM is reaffirming its closeness to Taiwanese beauty TSMC. But ARM should beware; foundries can get jealous. Maybe that was why TSMC started flirting with Intel and his Atom processor. And maybe the latest announcement will go some way to keep TSMC from thinking about the charms of Atom and focused on helping Cortex do well in the mobile computer space.